Walls
by EmmBee
Summary: A girl locked in a tower, a servant trapped in the court, a witch plagued by her past. When their lives intersect, will they finally find the freedom they all want? Based on the classic Grimm fairy tale "Rapunzel."
1. Chapter 1

She stared out the window, her chin resting on the broom-handle in her hands. The silence in the room unnerved her; she never thought that she might miss the noise and activity of having six sisters, all younger. Leaving all the exhausting work of taking care of children had been the first thought to go through her head when her husband had proposed to her.

She never imagined, not for one second, that she would miss so much the sound of little feet racing across her clean floor.

Her idle gaze fell on the garden across the street, the one owned by that witch, Gothel. Witches know how to take care of their gardens, she thought. Just look at that beautiful green rampion.

Oh, that green! The most incredibly bright, perfect shade of green!

It made her hungry. She turned away from the window and started for the kitchen cupboard to make herself a salad. But everything seemed tainted by the beautiful greenness of the witch's garden. Even the spinach, so fresh and crisp just yesterday when she bought it, looked wilted and brown and undesirable. She wrinkled her nose, threw the rotting spinach into the bucket of slops for the pigs, and dug around in the cupboard again.

When her husband returned from the fields that evening, he found her standing at the large window and gazing, wide-eyed and pale-faced, at the witch's garden. "Is there something wrong?" he asked, worried. His wife always greeted him at the door with a smile.

She didn't respond. She didn't even acknowledge him.

He shrugged and turned to open the cupboard. Dinner was going to be late, he could see that. But he was ravenously hungry and needed something in his stomach before he collapsed. They had gone to the market the day before, and his mouth watered at the thought of meat and potatoes and spinach and fruit.

There was nothing in the cupboard except a loaf of rye bread and a small tin can of sardines.

"Dear?" he called to his wife. "Dear, what happened to all the fresh food?"

"Rotten," she replied. Her voice was faint, as though she wasn't really speaking to him. "All rotten. I had to throw it to the pigs."

The man did not like rye bread or sardines, but he had little choice. At least they were better than going hungry.

The next morning, he went to the market and bought all of his wife's favorite foods, spending his last coppers on veal and apple pastries. He went home unusually early that evening and prepared the food the way he knew his wife to like it. He thought it all smelled wonderful, but his wife never once looked at him or sniffed the air; her gaze, her mind, and her appetite remained fixed on the witch's garden.

For three days more, the man tried to persuade his wife to eat something—anything—but all his efforts were in vain. "If you don't eat, you will die!" the man cried in frustration.

His wife had, that morning, collapsed from hunger by the window. Her cheeks sunk, and her hands trembled. But all the food looked, smelled, and tasted rotten to her when she compared it to the witch's rampion. That beautiful, wonderful rampion.

Finally, because he did not want to lose his beloved wife, the man snuck at night into the witch's garden, snagged a hasty handful of rampion, and scrambled back to his wife with her longed-for food. The woman was delighted and scarfed down the rampion in a matter of moments, thanking her husband emphatically between bites. They both thought that now, at long last, they could move on normally with their lives, but no such fortune befell them. Tasting the rampion was the wrong solution to the problem; the woman became addicted, and, in just two days, she was ill to death from exhaustion and hunger and longing. So, once again, the man climbed the wall to the witch's garden, grabbed what rampion his fingers first touched, and turned to hurry away.

But that time, the man was not as fortunate as he had been on his first venture over the witch's wall. As he swung one leg over the wall, a large handful of greens clenched in one fist, the witch opened her back door and saw him. "What are you doing?" she demanded, her dark eyes sweeping over the man clinging to a single small handful of her food.

The man tried to answer, but the angry set of the witch's mouth tightened his throat and trapped his words.

"Don't you have an excuse to make?" the witch asked, her voice a sneer. "I've caught you sneaking into my garden and stealing my rampion."

Fear of what she might say next loosed the man's tongue. "Please, spare me," he stuttered, sliding from the top of the wall to drop to his knees in front of the witch. "My wife saw your rampion from the window, your fine green rampion, and she was possessed with longing so great she would have died. I beg of you, spare us both!"

The witch pursed her thin grey lips in consideration. "If it is all as you say, then go, and take all the rampion you wish."

The man cried out in delight and sprang to his feet.

"But," the witch added, "I will have the child your wife brings into this world as payment. Do not fear, I will tend to it as a mother."

My wife is not pregnant, the man thought to himself. Which would be worse: to die for the handful of herb in his hand, leaving his wife alone in the world, or to promise a witch the child that didn't—and, in all likelihood, wouldn't—even exist? He couldn't bear the thought of his wife being left alone in the world, and so, in his fear and gratitude, the man gave the only answer he could think to give.

He promised the witch his child.

For nine months, things went well for the couple. The wife's desire for the witch's rampion was always satisfied. She never saw Gothel herself, but her husband told her that he had, and that she was free to gather however much rampion she wished, whenever she wished for it. Their garden was lush that summer, productive and plentiful. The man was able to raise all the food they would need for the entire winter, and was even able to sell some of the surplus at the market, which brought in an income larger than the poor couple had ever known.

One morning about a month after the start of their fortune, the woman woke up feeling ill, so ill that her concerned husband sent for the local doctor. But the doctor only smiled brightly at the couple's worry. "May I congratulate you, ma'am?" he asked as he began to pack up his medical tools.

"What for?" the woman wondered.

"My dear, you have nothing to be concerned about, not now, at least. You are simply pregnant."

The man, sitting at the edge of the bed and holding his wife's hand, blanched at the announcement. "No," he whispered, but his denial was drowned out by his wife's happy squeal. He hadn't forgotten the deal he had made with the witch. He had never told his wife of the promise he had made; he never thought he would have to honor it, and to tell her would have only caused unnecessary worry for her.

"Pregnant? Are you quite sure? Pregnant?" she wondered.

"Quite sure, ma'am. I suspect you will have yourselves a happy little baby in about eight month's time. I can find my own way to the door." And the doctor, with a quick smile at the couple, exited the house.

The man buried his face in his hands. "No," he whispered again.

His wife noticed him this time. "What's wrong? Didn't you hear? Oh, it's everything we've ever wished for! A child! A baby!"

He had no choice now. Regret made him stumble over the words, shame made his voice shake, but he finally managed to explain that it was that child, that baby, the one he was sure they'd never be so blessed to have, that paid for his wife's appetite.

"No," the woman protested at the end of her husband's tale. "No. You couldn't have."

"But I did." And the man hung his head and cried.


	2. Chapter 2

Lightening ripped through the village, each flash accompanied by the crackling noise that meant the storm was directly overhead. Rain poured from the clouds, the drops making a strange, sharp sound, like shards of glass being hurled against the windows. The man tossed, unable to rest peacefully in the middle of such a storm, then was suddenly awake when the new cry, a cry of pain, touched his ears.

He rolled over, propping himself up on his elbows and bending low over his wife. "What's wrong?" he asked urgently.

She reached over to him and grabbed his arm with tight and desperate fingers. Her face was pale and covered in a thin film of sweat. "Now," she huffed between breaths. "The baby is coming. Now."

"No, not now!" the man begged, his voice rising with panic. "No, it's still too early, and we don't have a doctor—"

He was interrupted by another cry of pain from his wife. "I…have no control…over it," she gasped after a moment. "It's coming. Now."

The man knew nothing about how to birth babies. Though he had spent some time over the past months consulting with doctors and midwives and other such people, his questions had been about how to raise a child, how to keep a child healthy and happy—and, occasionally, to wonder about the mothering abilities of witches, a question he always asked in subdued tones and never responded to the inevitable comments about what a strange question that was. He never thought he would need to know about the actual moments of birth.

His wife pressed her head back into the pillows and made a sound that reminded him of the sound that animals sometimes make the instant before they die from a gunshot wound. The noise coming from his wife's lips frightened the man more than the thought of birthing his baby did, and he sprang from the bed to kneel at his wife's side. "All right," he said quickly, running his hand across her damp, cold forehead. "What should I do?"

"Hot water. And…and clean towels," the woman muttered.

The man scurried around the cottage, reviving the weak fire and gathering all the clean cloth he could find, hurried along by his wife's pained gasping.

Thunder rolled down the streets. Wind ripped at the windows.

The man knew nothing about birthing babies, but, when his wife's loud, tearful cries began to change to low moans, he knew something was not right. Something was not right, and he didn't know what it was or how to fix it. A little voice inside his head warned him that, if he didn't do something—and now—that he was going to lose both his wife and his baby.

So when a loud knock on the door broke through the strange animal-like noises escaping his wife's throat, the man did not bother to wonder who was at the door. He rushed for it and opened it.

The witch, Gothel, stood out in the storm, her greying hair hanging loose at her shoulders, her dark clothes dripping with rain. "Something is wrong with the baby," the man told her, not caring that he was begging aid from the very witch he had tried these past months to avoid. All he cared for was the fact that he was losing his wife, and with her, his child. "Please. Help."

"Of course," Gothel replied, pushing past the man to enter the cottage.

The witch knew all about birthing babies, she explained when the woman protested her presence. "Your baby is coming too early and is not facing the correct direction. I can help." Gothel sent the man for hot water—"as hot as you can make it"—and all his clean linens.

The night wore on. The thunder and wind were drowned out by the woman's cries and Gothel's instructions. "Push, push…keep breathing…hand me that towel…more hot water…"

Then, finally, the clouds broke from the sky, and dawn arched over the eastern horizon, and the dawn was greeted by a new sound: the piercing wail of a healthy baby girl.

The woman held her baby to her breast, all the pain of the night forgotten in her joy over the beautiful little red creature squirming in her arms. She looked up at the witch, her eyes shining. "Thank you, Gothel. Thank you."

The witch touched the baby's forehead with one bony finger. "What will you name her?" she asked.

"Anna. After my mother," the woman replied.

"Little Anna," Gothel cooed at the baby. "Go to sleep now, both of you. You've had a long night."

As the baby and her mother drifted towards sleep, the man showed Gothel the door. "How can I possibly thank you?" he asked as the witch crossed into the street.

Gothel turned to the man. "Do not think that I have forgotten what you owe me," she replied, her voice firm but not altogether unkind. "I will return in six months, when the child is weaned, to collect what I was promised."

"My baby girl," the man remembered mournfully.

"Your baby girl," the witch repeated. "Do not fear for the child, man. I will not harm her."

As she said she would, Gothel returned to the cottage six months later, and, though the man and his wife both begged with tears for her to forget the debt they owed her, witches do not forget wrongs or forgive debts. She blessed the couple quietly, cradled the baby in both arms, and left the cottage.


	3. Chapter 3

Gothel did not return to the house with the garden, of course. A part of her withered heart had been touched by the tears of the man and his wife, the love they bore for each other and their child. No one had touched her so deeply since...but that direction of thought was best avoided. Gothel knew that losing the baby had hurt them, and she would not force them through the pain of watching their baby grow up outside of their care. The witch had a quiet cabin in the middle of the deepest forest to which she and her little girl retreated.

It was there, in that little cabin in the middle of the forest, that Anna passed her first twelve years of life. She was a bright girl, spirited, intelligent, and temperamental, just as often laughing with joy as crying with anger. She loved to pretend. Sometimes, she would come into the cabin and prance around with her head up and shoulders back. "Mother Gothel?" she would ask.

"What is it, child?" Gothel would answer, dropping whatever she had been doing to look at her girl.

Anna would twirl in front of the old witch, showing herself off as best as she knew how. "Do I look like a princess today?"

Then Gothel would smile. It never occurred to Anna that princesses did not present themselves to their admirers still covered in dirt, with forest leaves stuck in their hair and the tips of their braids wet with pond water. Princesses did not run wild like animals through the trees or spend hours digging in the dirt, searching for buried treasure. But Gothel would always answer her question affirmatively. "Why, yes, my little rapunzel," she would say, often using the nickname that was a reference to how Anna came into her life, the nickname that always made Anna smile. "You do look like a princess today."

Anna would beam, and then would race off again to try to make friends of the forest animals or imagine herself a damsel in distress. She loved to tell herself stories of heroes and villians, of maidens cursed and lovers doomed. She loved to stand in the middle of the forest and imagine that she had been exiled from the world and forced to wander until a handsome prince came to set her free.

She loved to imagine, to dream and pretend, but she never thought that any of her imaginings might come true.

Anna was the most beautiful girl upon whom the sun had ever shone, and her beauty worried the witch. What if Anna were exposed to the world? She would become the victim of men—they would want her, and they would try to hurt her. Gothel would not tolerate anyone doing such things to her baby girl, her little rapunzel. And so, for twelve years, the witch had been secretly casting a spell over Anna's naturally long golden hair. Her girl would never be made to suffer the way she had.

It took twelve years, but finally, Anna was ready for the life she would have to lead.

The day came too quickly. But Gothel understood what had to be done, and she would do whatever she had to do to keep her girl safe from the people who would try to hurt her. Sometimes, solitude really was the only way. And so, one bright, sunny morning a little after Anna's twelfth birthday, Gothel packed a small pack of food and water and called to her girl, "Come along, my little rapunzel. We are going on a trip."

Anna hurried over from where she had been creating buildings in the sand and slipped her smooth hand trustingly into Gothel's bony one. "To where, Mother Gothel?" she wondered.

Gothel's heart pounded. Anna was such a sweet, beautiful thing. "To the tower," she answered, trying to hide her sadness behind a smile.

Anna was delighted. She loved the tower. It was so high, so wonderfully furnished. Why, the king himself couldn't have a room so amazing!

Gothel led her girl through the dense woods to the tower. She was glad Anna loved it already. She did a good job preparing her little girl for the life she had to live.

It didn't take long for Gothel and Anna to reach the tower. Anna, with a shout, dashed through the door and up and up the flights of steps. The room at the top of the steps was her favorite place in the whole world—besides the cozy little cabin in the woods, of course. Everything in the room was made for a princess: the bed had sheets of satin, the large mirror on the far wall was made of gold, the tapestries and carpets that decorated the stone were woven of lamb's wool and silk. But, Anna liked the window best of all. From it, she could see everything, the woods and the cabin, and, on clear days when she strained her eyes, she fancied she could even see all the way to the castle.

Gothel was miserable as she began muttering the spell that would wall up the door. Anna was just a little girl. But, deep down, Gothel understood that it was necessary. The world would want Anna only for her beauty, and Gothel could not—would not—allow that.

It began to grow dark. Gothel blew a kiss toward her girl and left, crying as she walked. Anna would feel as though she had been betrayed, and the fear of her girl's anger toward her made the witch's heart quail. Anna was not old enough to understand that it was for her own good, and she would hate the witch for locking her up.

At dusk, Anna hurried down the steps to meet Gothel by the patch of thorns under the tower, as she knew to do. But when she opened the door, there was a wall there, blocking her path out. It looked as though the tower had grown over the door. "Mother Gothel?" Anna shouted. "Help me! I'm stuck!"

There was no reply.

Anna raced back up the steps and looked out the window. Deep in the woods, she could see a cabin with a light on and smoke curling from the chimney.


	4. Chapter 4

Days, months, years passed_. _In the forest, old trees fell and new ones grew to take their places. Sunlight shined, and storms raged. Seasons came, and seasons went. Streams flooded and dried. Animals migrated. In the forest, life went on as it had for time out of mind. The only real difference was the songs.

Every day, every minute of every day, songs filled the air, songs so beautiful that the birds themselves would stop singing, so as not to pollute the beauty with their own weak tunes. Passing hunters would listen to the songs, entranced, and bring home tales to their wives and children about spirits in the woods.

None ever knew that it was no spirit who sang, but a girl locked in a tower that was removed from both land and sky.

Anna lived alone. She spent most of her days at the window, staring out toward the forest and beyond, always singing. The music kept her sane. She sang about everything: the tower, the trees, the wind, the sun. She sang about isolation and loss and heartbreak. She sang about the forest, about how in the days of her childhood, she would roam amongst the trees and try to make friends of the woodland animals, never mind that she never succeeded. She missed those days, the early days when she was free--free to come and go as she pleased, free to roam through the world. She sang about how she missed the feeling of soil beneath her bare feet, the sound of a stream bubbling as though just for her. She sang about the feeling of knowing that the world was opened and full of possibilities, and how it was now closed behind a wall of stone. She was closed out from both earth and sky, trapped behind those solid grey walls, perhaps forever.

For a long time, Anna hated the witch with all the fire she had inside of her. Every day, when Gothel came to visit her in the tower, she would refuse to obey the order to toss down her hair so the witch could climb up and speak with her. She would pull back from the window and lie down on her bed, ignoring the voice that would float up from the bottom of the tower.

"Anna, my dear," Gothel would say, every day when Anna would refuse to speak with her, "I know you think me cruel for locking you away like this. But, trust me, it is better that you live here, safe from the world. Anna, precious, you would be far worse off if the world saw you. You would be wanted for your beauty, hurt for it, then, when it faded—and it would, Anna, it would—you would be cast off like rubbish, trampled by the men who had once promised to love you until the day they died."

Anna would only curl up more tightly on her bed and hate the witch all that much more. She hated her for taking away the forest and the dirt, hated her down to the core of her being. No criminal, Anna was sure, could have such a cruel prison or heartless jailor. No criminal would be forever cut off from everything that made life worth living, and Anna regretted the days when she had once trusted and loved the witch, when she had called her Mother Gothel.

But, eventually, her hate dried up like soil without water; loneliness replaced it, and loneliness was the most horrible thing Anna had ever known, worse than the piercing betrayal and anger she felt toward the witch who had locked her up. Loneliness was a hole in her heart, an ache in her stomach, a tear in her side. After some time with her loneliness, she realized that she would rather see the witch than spend another day alone in the tower. And so, after a few years, Gothel would stand at the base of the tower and call to her to let down her hair, and she would wrap her long braid around a hook on the windowsill and toss her hair out the window, and the witch would scale the side of the tower and spend a hour with her girl.

One hour every day was the only time she was not left completely alone, and, as time wore on, as seasons came and seasons went, as trees fell and trees grew, as sunlight shined and storms raged, Anna sang to her loneliness. Birds in deference would silence their twittering, and roving hunters in awe would stop to listen, but none ever ventured near the tower. And, every night, after a long and lonely day broken only by Gothel's visit, Anna's voice would run dry, and the beautiful girl removed from both the earth and the sky would cry herself to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: I want to take a quick moment to thank everyone who has been reading and commenting. As always, you guys are all amazing, and I'm still having a hard time getting my head around the idea that there really are people out there that actually enjoy my writing. But enough of my blathering; on with the story!**

--

The hound sniffed along the ground, searching out the scent of a rabbit or a fox. Hoofbeats pounded out an even pace behind him, the steady _one-two-three, one-two-three _of an easy canter. A squirrel, frightened by the sound of approaching horses, scuttled across the hound's path, and the dog threw back his head and howled.

"There!" called the man at the front of the group. He had browned skin, the dark hair and eyes of an Aridonian, and a rifle slung across his shoulders. He and the small group of hunters behind him—courtiers looking to put some energy into their soft limbs and the prince hoping for some sport—urged their horses faster.

The squirrel darted this way and that, jumping from tree to tree in an attempt to avoid the hunters, but the hound stayed on its tail, scaring it from every hiding place the squirrel found. The riders pushed their horses after the braying hound, weaving in and out between trees and ducking under branches. The man at the front caught sight of the grey tail they tracked, and the realization of what they hunted made him laugh. Such fuss over a small grey squirrel, he thought. The prince would be disappointed. "I will have a big catch," he had said, early in the morning when the party started out. "I will bring home a deer. You will not laugh at me, William. I will shoot myself a deer, and then I will have the tanner put its head up in my bedchamber."

William shook his head. The prince would be sorely disappointed with nothing but a grey squirrel to show for all his confidence, and he suspected he would not hear the end of the haughty royal's complaints until something new disappointed the prince—which would at least not take too long. The prince was disappointed a lot.

The hound snapped at the squirrel's tail and sent the little rodent leaping into the branches of a nearby tree. The dog paused, panting, and yowled from the distress of loosing his quarry. Behind him, the horses slowed to a halt under the tree into which the squirrel had escaped.

"What happened? Why are we not chasing down the beast?" demanded the prince as he shoved his way to the front of the group. Though he was the same age as William, the prince was still as soft as a child, with more fat than muscle filling out his shape. His blue velvet suit was striped with mud, and his scowl showed clearly how angry the dirt made him.

"Because, sir, the beast has climbed the tree and is hiding in the branches," William replied, pointing up between the leaves. His voice came out sounding too brusque, considering his audience, but he didn't care enough to retract his words.

The prince squinted up the trunk, his frown deepening. "What sort of beast was it that we were pursuing, before you let it get away? I do not see anything."

"Well, sir, squirrels are very small and can hide easily in trees."

The prince's face turned an unhappy shade of pink, darkening until it almost matched his red hair. "A squirrel? All that energy was wasted on a _squirrel_?"

William shrugged. The prince's expectation of a deer had never been anything but unrealistic.

The prince tugged on his horse's reins and twisted the animal around. "Then I want to go back. You will take me home. Now."

"Your Highness—" one of the courtiers began to protest.

"Now," the prince interrupted. "You will not contradict me."

William sighed, but he called to the dog and turned his horse north. "This way," he instructed as he moved through the courtiers, unable to quite hide the pain in his voice.

William hated the palace. For all that he was well-treated and well-respected as being the prince's own servant, he despised his good fortune. It had all been an accident anyway, an act of kindness that was supposed to have been rewarded. He and his father had both been thrilled by the appointment, and he had gone to the palace with the understanding that he could always return home. But his father had died two winters ago, and now William had no home to return to, no place but the palace, a stone jail disguised by large rooms and colorful tapestries.

"Wait. Stop!" The prince's imperious command cut through the disappointed silence of the hunting party. Everyone halted. "Did you hear that?"

A few courtiers cocked their heads. "Hear what, Your Majesty?" one muttered.

"There. You must hear it."

William began to shake his head and lead the group forward again, but then paused and listened carefully. He thought he had heard something, too.

Behind him, the courtiers started to shift impatiently. The prince held up his hand, and they dropped their heads and sat still. William's ears almost vibrated with the intensity of listening.

Yes, there was definitely something to hear: a song, higher and sweeter than a birdcall. Old stories flashed through his head, stories of spirits in the woods who sang to lure travelers further away from home. William shivered. The song was dimmed by distance and obscured by the forest, but it was still undeniably alluring, like a siren call from a rocky shore.

The prince pursed his lips. His expression smoothed out of its usual displeased scowl and into the detached vagueness of concentration. "The courtiers will return to the palace," he decided after a long moment. "I will seek the source of the singing." He twisted around and urged his horse west.

"Sir!" William protested, starting after the prince before he could make it out of sight. He doubted that the royal knew the stories told by hunters and woodcutters of singing spirits, and he couldn't let the prince get himself lost or killed, not while the whole country knew that their next king was under his supervision.

But the prince didn't turn.

"Sir!" William kicked his horse into a trot.

"What is it, William?" the prince asked without slowing or turning, his voice bored.

"You shouldn't follow voices in the woods, sir. They're nothing but spirits, trying to get you lost." As the words came out, he realized just how superstitious he sounded. Well, it's certainly better to be superstitious than dead, he thought.

The prince looked over at him with disdainful frown. "What does the King's son have to do with the beliefs of a mere hunter's son?" he asked.

"Fine," William snapped. "Don't believe it, and get yourself lost, or killed. I'm going back to the palace." He started to turn around again, but another sharp order from the prince stopped him.

"How dare you speak to me that way! You most certainly will not be returning to the palace. You will come with me to find the source of the singing, and then, when it has been found, you will take me home."

William exhaled between clenched teeth, mentally calculated his chances of avoiding prison if he kept riding north, then, when he had figured the chance to be very low, turned and followed the prince westward.

They rode for a long time, always following the alluring sound of a woman's song, until the sun had begun its decent toward the horizon and the daytime forest creatures had bedded down for the night. Then, finally, long after William had given up marking the way back, the forest suddenly opened up into a small oval-shaped meadow. The yellow-green grass was as tall as the horses' knees, but a path paved with uneven cobblestones cut straight across the clearing.

But what most captured and held the attention of both prince and servant was the tower.

It rose from the middle of the grassy meadow, as high as forty men. It was perfectly round and made of smooth grey stones so well fitted together that William could hardly see where one ended and the next began. The bottom of the tower was almost completely obscured by brown, twisted vines bearing wicked-looking thorns. The top of the tower had a peaked roof that draped over the edge to shade the window just below it.

At the prince's insistence, William dismounted and walked up to the tower—being careful to stay out of reach of the thorns—to examine it more closely. He saw, even in the dimming light of dusk, that the stones really were perfectly fitted, so carefully cut that no mortar had been used between them. He wondered what sort of precious items a tower so impeccably constructed could hold, and he circled it three times looking for a way in.

There was no door.

On the start of his fourth time around, a flare of light drew his eyes up to the window. Something moved inside the tower, and a face appeared in the window. William's next breath caught in his throat. He had been in court five years and had seen all the beauties the country had to offer. But not one of them was like her.

William heard the prince, still aboard his horse at the edge of the trees, sigh.

The tower forty men high and without a door, surrounded by a half-day's hard ride of deep woods, was home to the most beautiful woman either man had ever seen.


	6. Chapter 6

Anna stared down at the edge of the trees. No matter what she said to convince herself otherwise, the feeling that she was being watched would not go away. For several hours, the feeling had been getting more and more powerful, and now she couldn't even sing through the uneasy crawling sensation that was like being covered in millions of tiny spiders. She shivered.

William stood in the shadows of the trees, staring up at the tower and contemplating the reason he was in this place again, the very thing he had been doing for hours. A week ago, as he had been leading the prince back to the palace after first stumbling across the woman in the tower, the prince had made an unexpected announcement. "I love her," he had declared as they reached the outskirts of town, just before dawn. It had been the first words spoken by either of them since they had left the singing woman's presence.

"Sir?" William had wondered. The sleepless night had weighed heavily on his voice.

"I love her, and I wish to marry her."

William hadn't been able to make much sense of the words; his mind had been clouded by exhaustion and strange new feelings that all seemed to be centered on the woman with the strange home.

"So, as your lord and master, I order you to go back to the girl and woo her in my stead."

William had put up a valiant protest against this order, but the prince would not change his mind on the issue, and so, there he was again, seven days later, hiding in the shadows and staring up at the tower.

He didn't know the first thing about how to woo a woman; for most of his life, girls had ignored him, and recently, when the palace scullery maids and washer girls fluttered their eyelashes at him, he ignored them. But the prince's order had to be obeyed, so he sucked in a deep breath and moved from the protecting shadows of the trees and into the high-grass meadow. With another deep breath to steady his voice, he spoke, aiming his words at the window. "My lady!"

Anna's heart jolted at the sound of a strange, deep voice, and she stepped away from the window, her fingers shaking with panic. She had never heard such a voice before, but, from Gothel's descriptions of men, she could guess what it belonged to. A man had found her tower.

Stories flashed through her head, stories Gothel had told her about how men could only cause pain to a beautiful girl like her, stories that she used to tell herself about lovers doomed and lovers triumphant, stories she had read about handsome princes and evil brothers. She leaned against the wall near the window, still carefully out of sight, and let the stories spin themselves in her head.

"A man," Anna whispered. The word tingled with strange pleasure on her tongue. Her lips curved up into a small smile. She had never met a man before—none had ever found their way to her tower—and her curiosity quickly overwhelmed her fear. Without moving from her safe, solid place against the wall, she turned her head and spoke through the window. "Who's there? Who are you?"

Her speaking voice was as beautiful and haunting as her singing. William stepped closer to the tower, drawn toward the sound. "My name is William, my lady, and I come as…as…" He paused. How did people introduce themselves when they were acting in someone else's stead? "…As an ambassador from my lord and master, Prince David, son of King Timothy XII of Aridon."

Anna liked the sound of the man's voice. It was deep and full, the accent almost musical, and she thought that she could listen to it all day. "And what do you want?" she asked.

"I would like to see you, if I may. And…perhaps you could tell me your name?"

She didn't think long about that request. She wanted to see the man as well, so she twisted around to face the window and, resting her elbows on the wide sill, leaned her head out of the tower. The man at the bottom of the tower looked very small, and she had a hard time seeing much more than the rich brown color of his hair, even with his face tilted up towards her. She smiled down at him. "My name is Anna. I'm not anyone's ambassador, and I don't know any kings or princes, but I am locked in a tower, so maybe that makes up for at least one of those," she replied. It had been a very long time since she had tried to make a joke, and the one she did make was almost painfully weak, but she had an irrational urge to hear him laugh and was pleased when her wish was gratified. He had a wonderful laugh.

William chuckled, surprised. So few people in the palace had any sense of wit or humor. He strained his eyes to see her, but the distance and the high sun made seeing more than the flash of her golden-yellow hair impossible. "Yes," he agreed, "being locked in a tower more than outweighs being an ambassador of a prince." Anna, he thought. It was a simple name, the kind given to a daughter of poor, working parents. He liked it.

Then he shook his head and remembered his purpose. It was not up to him to like or dislike anything about this young woman. He was there to win her for his prince. "My lady, Prince David asked me to tell you how deeply you have touched him. He wishes you to know that he loves you dearly, and he asks for you to marry him." The words burned like acid in his mouth.

Anna's heart jolted again, for the second time in a few minutes; that time, it was not an intriguing feeling. Marry the prince? She couldn't. She didn't even know who the prince was, and, beside, Gothel would never allow it.

Would marrying the prince mean freedom from the tower?

Anna looked down at the tiny figure that was the first man she had ever met, and her heart sped up just a tiny bit. She wanted another chance to speak with him. She wanted, more than she had ever wanted anything before, to learn about him, to know him and call him a friend. "William," she answered, trying to ignore the way her cheeks warmed as she said his name, "I can't agree to what you request today. Come back tomorrow and tell me more about the prince you speak for, and then I will give you an answer."


	7. Chapter 7

William went back to the tower the next day, and the next, and more. Anna managed to prolong his business and bring him back another day by saying that she was unable to answer his initial request that day. "Come back tomorrow and tell me more about the prince, and I'll give you an answer," she said, always with the purpose of bringing him back the next day. And it worked. He kept coming. She knew no more of the prince after a week of these meetings than she did on the first afternoon; conversation had a difficult time remaining on the never-present royal for whom William spoke, but it drifted over most of the other subjects that she enjoyed: the forest, the birds, the past. He mentioned her singing occasionally, and she usually waved his compliments away and begged him to tell her what color the dirt was that afternoon, and whether the squirrels were beginning to bury nuts against the winter snow. William always supplied the answers to her questions and never asked why it mattered to her.

After three days, Anna had the courage to ask aloud what it was like in the palace and was surprised by the bitterness in William's voice when he spoke of it. "It's a great huge fortress of stone, with big windows and lots of people," he told her, "but it may as well be a prison cell for all the freedom those people have." Then he looked around, glanced up the tower toward Anna's window, and laughed. "Of course, this is coming from someone who has never been locked in a tower," he allowed, his face turning so red that Anna could see the color even from so high above him. "To you, I imagine the palace would be liberating."

Anna stared out over the tops of the forest trees, in the direction that she knew the palace laid, turning over the thought that had possessed her mind for days. If she were to say yes to William, agree to marry the prince, it might mean freedom from the tower. But would marriage to royalty bring along with it its own set of limitations, its own stone walls and stolen freedoms? "I hate walls," she muttered, certain that her voice could not carry down to where William stood.

For the first week, William remained at the bottom of the tower, always careful about the wicked-looking thorns that surrounded the stone, and Anna came to the window, and they conversed by shouted back and forth to each other. After a week, however, William mentioned that it was rather tiring to always be yelling, and that their conversations could last longer if there was some way that they could talk face-to-face. He said it wistfully, knowing perfectly well that there was no door into the tower—and, therefore, no way for him to get in or Anna to get out. Then Anna became excited and told him about the way the witch got in and out of the tower, and they agreed that it was worth a try for William to climb up. So Anna threw down her magically long hair, and William scaled the tower and crawled in through the window to her satin-and-gold prison.

It was the first time Anna ever really saw him clearly, and she thought that, now that she had seen him, she would never be able to look away. He was a head taller than she was, and pleasantly broad, with a firm chin and an overly-large nose. His hair was the color of fertile dirt—the kind that she used to spend her days digging through, she thought, and the comparison brought a quick smile to her lips—and messy, still tangled from whatever adventures he had been on earlier that day. His eyes were darker than his hair, a brown that was almost black, but with a depth and light in them that made looking away impossible.

He was, without a doubt, the single most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

William fingered the soft gold hair that still lay across his palm. Anna had been stunningly beautiful when he had looked up at her from the base of the tower. She was even more glorious up close, with hair of spun gold and eyes the color of a clear lake on a cloudless day: blue on the surface, but almost green at the bottom.

She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He smiled a little and struggled for something to say to her, something witty that would make her laugh or charming that would make her blush. But all he could come up with was "Well, I've never climbed up hair before," which he blurted out with a grimace, wanting to kick himself for the stupid comment.

Anna smiled. He had large, square front teeth; one of them overlapped the other. "It's an unusual ladder, yes, but it's the only one I've got," she said back, surprised by the awkward silence stretching across her room. Just minutes ago, they had been talking with all the ease of good friends. But the casual comfort of the past week had gone the way of a steady heartbeat: out the window.

William dropped his hand and let the braid slide from his palm, a hasty scan of the room, of the dingy gilded mirror and messy satin sheets, informing him that Anna had been an occupant of this tower for longer than he realized. "So this is where you live," he mumbled.

Anna bowed her head and traced the edge of one stone with her eyes. "This is where I am trapped, yes," she said, her voice sharp with old bitterness. "It's beautiful, isn't it? Has a great view, doesn't it?" Tears burned behind her eyes as all her hatred for her prison suddenly burst open inside of her like a rotten fruit.

William stepped toward her, his hand raised reflexively as though to touch her face. He heard in her voice the same sort of feeling that he felt toward the palace, toward his position—even honored as it was—as the prince's servant, and he ached to touch her and tell her that he understood. But then the memory of the prince's order rose in his mind. He was there to woo her for the prince. She was already claimed. He balled his outstretched hand into a tight fist and hated his position anew.

For the rest of the afternoon, William had to keep reminding himself of the fact that this girl was already claimed by the prince, and he was just there to win him her hand. He was not permitted any feelings for her.

But that night, as the prince hounded him for details of the day's encounter with the singing woman in the tower, William realized that it was already too late. He loved her.

Anna lay for a long time in her bed that night, staring up at the blackness that she knew was the ceiling, even though she couldn't see it. For the past several nights, she had laid awake like that, thinking over the day, thinking over William. She hadn't told Gothel about him, worried about the way she might react, but she was beginning to think that maybe it was time to mention him. Gothel was wise in the ways of the world, wise like Anna wasn't. And Anna missed the days when she could tell the old witch anything. The secret was making her uncomfortable.

Anna closed her eyes, though it made no difference to what she could see whether her eyes were open or not, and brought the image of William to her mind. For days, she had imagined seeing him up close. She had tried to picture what he might look like. Her imaginings had been poor, pale shadows next to reality.

She sighed and stretched. Even just thinking about him made her heart pound in a wild and exhilarating rhythm. He had touched her once, just to smooth her skirt out of his way when they had finally sat down on the bed, and she was sure she could still feel the heat of his fingers on the spot where they had grazed her leg. She let the entire afternoon play through her head.

Then she bolted upright. The afternoon had not gone smoothly at all, not after she had invited him to sit so they could talk comfortably. William had been impossibly awkward with her, hesitant, ending every sentence with a mention of the prince. Every one of his words that day had been laced with the memory that he was there only because his "lord and master, Prince David of Aridon"—as he kept saying—had ordered him to be.

Anna felt as though her heart would stop beating. She loved him, but it didn't matter, because he was only there for the prince.

It had been more than a week since Anna had last cried herself to sleep, a week where she had been buoyed up by the fact that she was falling in love. But that night, she cried herself to sleep, and the tears that stained her pillow were more bitter and heart-wrenching than any tears she had ever shed.


	8. Chapter 8

Gothel tossed and turned under her blanket, twisting herself up in the thin sheet that covered her pea-shuck mattress. All she wanted was a little bit of sleep, but her head wouldn't quiet enough for her to rest. Anna had looked absolutely wretched when she had seen her that morning, and the image of her little girl's dull gaze and tear-streaked face plagued the witch's mind. The voices inside her head, the little one most people call conscience, the bigger one most people call reason, had been getting louder these last months.

What have you done? conscience was wondering. She's your baby. How could you have done that to her?

I've only done what was necessary, reason argued back. Only what will keep her safe.

What will keep _her_ safe, or what will keep _you_ safe? conscience demanded.

Reason had no answer for that question, and the memory of Anna pale and crying made Gothel think that conscience had a point.

She hated thinking about her past, the days when she was young and pretty, and her mind automatically shied away from the memories. But the voices in her head had been bringing them up for several months—sometimes on reason's side, and sometimes on conscience's. They seemed decided now, though. The memories of her young-woman years were firmly on the side of conscience, a side they didn't seem to belong, since conscience was arguing so strongly against keeping Anna in her safe place away from the world.

Gothel sighed and sat up, rubbing her palms across her eyes to wipe away the sleep that wanted to cling there. The fire in her cottage had burned down to just embers; she stood up and tossed another log into the fireplace, and the cheerful orangey-yellow tongues of light soon sprang up to lick at the log. She poured a cup's worth of water into the kettle that hung near the fireplace, busied her hands for a moment with collecting some leaves in the bottom of her old ceramic mug, thinking that some hot tea would settle her mind enough for her to get some sleep. While the water was heating, she stared at the play of firelight against the log-and-mud walls of the room.

She had never wanted to hurt Anna by keeping her in that tower—she always knew Anna would hate it at first, because her girl was a bright and spirited creature who felt the whole range of emotions with more fire than most girls her age, but she thought that, finally, after so many years, Anna had come to accept, even like, life in the tower. The past week especially, they had laughed and talked together like they hadn't done since they lived in the cottage in the woods.

Gothel wondered how she could have been so blind all those years, or so diluted. She was a witch, and she was usually very good at seeing the way things were. How had she missed the fact that the tower was killing her girl?

She had meant for the tower, for the seclusion, to keep Anna safe from the pain she herself had experienced in the hands of a man she had loved, back before time and the practices of a witch had stripped her of all her good looks. She couldn't bear the thought of her rapunzel feeling the kind of pain she had lived through. But she had seen that morning, in Anna's pale face and distant expression, that the tower was robbing Anna of everything the witch loved about her girl, and that it would eventually rob Gothel of her child altogether.

Gothel poured the boiling water over the tea leaves and gulped down a large mouthful of the too-hot liquid. It burned her tongue, but she hardly cared.

She had a hard time admitting that she had been wrong to do what she did; she was a witch, and she was used to being right. She sipped, more slowly, at the remaining tea, her mind still churning over the thought of mistakes. It was more than just the tower;a distinct feeling of wrongness pervaded every thought she had that was in any way related to her girl. The rampion that the woman had craved, that the man had stolen—that was an accident. Even her conscience consented to that fact. It wasn't supposed to have affected anyone the way it did; it was simply the product of a growing experiment gone awry.

But there were other things which her conscience, roused by her sleepless mind, couldn't let her justify. She shouldn't have demanded the price she had for the herb her poor neighbor had taken. But she had seen how much the man loved his wife, and she was jealous, and the jealousy made clear thinking impossible.

Gothel watched the bits of tea leaves swirl at the surface of the liquid, her memories dancing between moments of her past. What had happened to her in the days of her youth had been her own fault. She had trusted someone who didn't deserve her trust, loved someone who didn't love her back. She had been so sure of herself that she didn't bother to listen to her sister's warnings, her friend's warnings, and she had been hurt by her pride and negligence. She had only wanted to keep Anna safe from the kind of pain she had experienced, not bring down another, more fatal, kind of pain. Anna would waste away to nothing before many more years had gone by.

You can stop it, her conscience reminded her. The spell to unbrick the doorway was a little more involved than the one that had sealed it up, but it was still easily done. Gothel saw now how things really were. The real world might bring heartache to her girl, her little rapunzel, but life in a tower, shut off from both land and sky, would kill her.

Finally, the old witch's thoughts slowed, and Gothel climbed under her blanket again and stared up at the thatch roof of her cottage until the log in the fireplace burned down to ashes.

--

**Author's Note: Thank you to reader and commenter Lil' Dinky for her insight into Gothel's rampion.**


	9. Chapter 9

The prince glanced over his cup at William. "How is my bride today?" he asked.

William looked up from his plate, startled to realize that he was in the palace, sitting at supper. He had no memory of how he got there, no memory of leaving the tower earlier that afternoon. "Your bride, sir?" he wondered.

"The singing girl in the tower." The prince spoke the words slowly, as though to a simpleton, allowing each sound to crawl under his skin and burrow deep. "The one you will bring home to me."

"Oh. Yes. She's…she's doing well, sir." William stumbled over the answer. It bothered him, much more than it should, to talk about Anna with the prince, more than it bothered him to talk about the prince to Anna.

The prince turned his salad fork over in his hands, examining the tongs with a lack of expression that could only be interpreted as profound boredom. "And has she said yes to my offer yet?" he asked, casually, as if the answer mattered less to him than the shape of the fork.

William fought back a surge of resentment. Anna deserved so much better than that pompous royal who cared less about her than he did his fork. "No," he replied, embarrassed when the word, even quick as it was, shook with repressed feelings. The usual excuse for going back in the morning—to try once more, give her another day and she might say yes—lay on his tongue, but he swallowed it back. His voice was not reliable enough for anything more than that short "no."

The prince turned to his father. "You will make an announcement for my impending marriage."

"Son," King Timothy protested. His fleshy face, usually flushed with wine, paled under the prince's scowl. "You know there is nothing more that I would like to do than to announce your marriage, but I cannot until you at least have a bride. It would be unseemly." He looked down at his plate and poked at an uneaten tomato with the wrong end of his salad fork.

The prince only scowled deeper and turned back toward William. "I give you one more week. Bring my bride home for me in that time, or you will suffer the consequences of disobedience."

William knew about the consequences of disobedience, and, though he would relish the dismissal from court, he was not so eager to go to prison. And so, for the next three days, he tried to present the prince to Anna in the best light he could. But, try as he might, he couldn't seem to do it right.

"You really dislike him, don't you?" Anna wondered one afternoon, three days after the set of the deadline.

"No," William lied, knowing even as he plunged headlong into the lie that he was giving himself away. "He…takes some getting used to, but…but, on the inside, he's really a…a good person." In truth, the thought of Anna—the bright, beautiful, intelligent young woman who owned his mind and his heart—next to the sullen, imperious cretin called the prince never ceased to turn his stomach, and actively thinking about the possibility was at the very bottom of the things he wanted to do.

Anna smiled slightly. "You are a terrible liar," she teased, trying to change the subject.

William smiled back, a little sheepishly. "I know. My father used to be able to tell when I was lying before I even had a chance to say anything."

"What happened to your father?"

He shook his head. "I'm not sure. Two winters ago, I got word from my uncle that he had died, but I don't really know why. What about you? You weren't born to the witch who locked you up here, were you?"

Anna shook her head and ran her hand across her skirt, smoothing away a wrinkle that wasn't there. "I never even knew my parents; Mother Gothel took me when I was only a baby. I was…payment, for some food that my father stole."

"Ah." They sat in silence for a long minute, William remembering his father, Anna thinking of the shadowed faces that were her parents. She wondered briefly about why he never mentioned his mother, but she didn't have a chance to ask before William unsubtly turned the conversation back to the prince. "He's been asking about you, wondering about whether you are going to answer his proposal. He expects you at the palace in no more than four days." There was an edge to his voice that she recognized, and she could tell that he was determined to stay on this topic.

Anna hated the subject of the prince, but she understood that any attempts of hers to change the subject would not be successful. "And what have you been saying?" she asked. She could hear the bitterness in her words, but she couldn't find it in her to hide it.

William exhaled through his teeth. The prince had been asking about her especially often in the past few days, and William had been telling him what he wanted to hear—that the woman in the tower was going to accept the proposal, she really was as lovely and kind as her voice made her seem, and didn't the cooks outdo themselves for this meal?—because he didn't have the nerve to tell the truth.

The truth would get him worse than dismissed and sent to prison. The truth would probably get him hanged.

"Well, there's not really much to tell. You haven't actually said yes yet," he said aloud, trying to joke.

Anna stared at the far wall, at the image of the room reflected back at her in the mirror. In the reflection, she thought she could see the future if she said yes. She saw herself in a white dress and veil, marrying the prince who she could only just picture. She saw herself the princess, and then the queen, of the country. She saw servants and parties and banquets.

But, mostly, she saw walls.

Walls in the palace, the rooms, the halls. Walls around the moat, and again around the grounds. She saw her life trapped forever behind the walls, trapped behind the man who would be her husband. William had told her how the queen was treated in the palace: carefully, like a cherished piece of glass. She was kept in the safety of the walls of the palace, with a few brief excursions out into the walled gardens on fine days.

Anna shivered as the images of the future danced across the smooth surface of the gilded mirror. She couldn't do that. She couldn't live her life always behind walls.

Then the surface of the mirror cleared, showing her just the reflection of the room, of the disheveled bed she sat on, the grey stone to her back, her own pale face and wide eyes staring back at her. She saw William, his head bowed, his eyes on his lap, on his tightly-fisted hands, and the future spun out in a different direction, buried deep in the woods she loved and missed. It was a hard future, full of empty stomachs and cold winters, leaky roofs and cracked windows. But that future was her own, built and maintained with her own two hands. And William was there—William, who was her glimpse of the world, her glimmer of hope, her possibility of freedom. She loved him. Despite all the warnings Gothel had given her about the deceptions of men, she loved him, and there was nothing she could do to change that fact.

Anna blinked, and the images vanished, so quickly that she doubted they had been anything but her own fancy. The mirror sat, quietly, reflecting only the bed and the wall and the two people in the tower.

"William?" she whispered, still staring ahead at the mirror. In its reflection, she saw William tilt his head toward her. "Do you love me?" She held her breath and watched him in the mirror.

Without looking up from his hands, William drew in a deep breath, let it out very slowly, and nodded. "I do," he muttered. "More than anything."

She spun toward him, propping one knee up on her bed, her cheeks warming with excitement. "Then you can't possibly want me to marry the prince," she said. Her voice came out sounding odd—breathy, high, and half-choked with the tumultuous swirl of emotions she felt, too many to count or name.

William looked up at her then, and the light in his dark eyes blazed. "He doesn't deserve you," he hissed through a clenched jaw. "You are far, far too good for that miserable worm they have the nerve to call a prince."

Anna leaned forward until her nose almost touched his; William was sure that the closeness would kill him if it lingered too long. The prince was expecting her in the palace in no more than four days, and, though he hated the prince and the court—and especially himself—more with every passing hour for it, he was going to try to see the prince's expectations come true. That's what was expected of him, what he swore to do the day he entered the court, because that's what the prince's own servant did: he made the prince's expectations come true. But he wasn't about to let this opportunity pass.

So William closed the last two inches between them and kissed her.

For a single second, Anna felt fear rising up her throat as Gothel's warnings about the deceptions of men played through her head. This was the exact thing that the old witch had warned her about: the impulsive, unrestrained feelings that came along with that kind of touch, and there was a second where Anna nearly stood and ran.

But it was William who was kissing her, and she knew, as surely as she knew anything, that he would never try to deceive her. The fear subsided. Her eyes fluttered closed, her arms wound around his neck, and she kissed him back.


	10. Chapter 10

White foam flecked off the horse's neck, testifying to how hard the poor creature was being ridden. But William couldn't see it. Blinded partly by darkness and partly by panic, he couldn't see much at all—vague shapes that were trees, the slight silvery light of the moon filtering through the mostly-bare branches, but that was it. He crouched low over the horse's neck, trying with minimal success to protect his face from the invisible braches that tore at him as he rode, and spurred the tiring animal faster with every step.

He had hoped the speed would help. It didn't.

Eventually, finally aware that his horse would drop dead from exhaustion if he pushed it any harder, he sat back in the saddle and brought the horse down to a walk. The surrounding forest didn't look familiar, but he gave the horse its head and hoped he wasn't too lost. The horse accepted the change of pace with a couple of relieved snorts and turned in the direction William prayed was the correct one.

He wasn't even sure what the correct direction should be. For a while, he thought it might be the palace—at least, that was his thought when he had first kicked his horse into that wild gallop. But the palace was hardly someplace to be racing toward. He thought about going back to the tower. But he knew he shouldn't. More than that—he knew he couldn't. Not tonight. Not ever again.

What was the problem? a little part of him wondered. It was just one little kiss. It wasn't like he had seen her with her clothes off.

No, he had managed, somehow, some way, to keep it from going quite _that_ far. Life secluded had kept Anna innocent of some things, and William loved her too much to take advantage of her. But it had hardly been just one little kiss. And he couldn't forget that it wasn't just Anna he had kissed; it was the prince's potential bride.

William dropped his head, stared at the film of sweat on the horse's neck that shone in the irregular patches of moonlight, and wondered how things had gotten so out of hand. When had he forgotten that he wasn't supposed to fall in love with her? When had his position as the prince's servant slipped his mind long enough for him to let himself care about her? And yet, there was a part of him, a large part of him, that couldn't feel sorry for it, even as the other, smaller part quailed at the thought of what might happen if anyone—especially the prince—ever found out.

Because she loved him, too.

Those had been her parting words that night, whispered as he ducked through the tower window. She said that she loved him, and, in that moment, nothing else had mattered—not even his position as a servant, or hers as the prince's potential bride. They had been just Anna and William. And, for a moment, he had been certain that he could face anything—dismissal, imprisonment, even hanging—if only she would say she loved him.

Then, when he had reached the bottom of the tower and had found his horse even in the darkness, the weight of what had happened that day had crashed down on him with all its force, and he could do nothing but remember his place. She was the prince's potential bride, and he was the prince's own servant; they could never _be_ just Anna and William.

William watched his fingers constrict around the reins, tightening until his knuckles turned white in the moonlight. The horse stopped obediently, and he spurred it forward again with a force that was almost cruel. He hoped the movement would keep the horrible reality forming in his mind from actually turning into words. It didn't, and the realization, like the panic before, hit him like a kick in the stomach.

He couldn't see Anna again. After what had happened, after what he had done, he didn't know how to face her.

--

Anna couldn't sleep. She had been trying for several hours, and, now that it was nearly dawn, attempting to sleep that night seemed a pointless task. She threw off her blanket and slid from the bed to light a candle against the pre-dawn darkness.

With the candle burning, its flickering golden light dimly illuminating the room, she sat back down on the edge of her bed and stared at her bare feet. A coil of her braid lay near them; she stretched out her leg and stroked the gold hair with one toe. It had been a long time since she had really noticed her hair as anything more than a fixture, a ladder. In the candlelight, it glowed and shimmered like real gold. For all that it was heavy and difficult to manage, it was undeniably beautiful.

It wasn't just her hair that looked perfect this morning, either. She had never noticed before that the branches on the trees made such intricate patterns against the sky, or how the grey stones of the tower walls could shimmer. Everything was beautiful this morning, and she had a good idea as to why.

Anna hummed quietly to herself, a smile growing on her face. She knew a lot of stories from her years of reading and pretending, but none of them had ever mentioned how love made everything golden and beautiful. It was an unexpected effect, but it made her want to sing at the top of her lungs to the whole world. She stood, stepped over to the window, and leaned her elbows against the sill.

There were few birds that wintered in the forest, but those few were hardy creatures that could sing even in the pre-dawn of a late fall morning. Anna had a wild urge to join them, so she sucked in a deep breath and sang, loud, putting into her voice every ounce of the new and wonderful feeling that filled her heart.

Gothel, out on the cold morning in search of the last late-season mushrooms, heard the new song join the few birds in greeting the day, and she stopped walking to listen. Anna had not sounded so happy since the last time she had stood barefoot in the woods and sang to whatever forest creatures would listen. The old witch leaned against the nearest tree and closed her eyes to hold back the tears that were suddenly threatening to spill down her cheeks. Anna's joyous song filled her ears, and she had to put one bony hand over her mouth to hold back the emotions in her throat. How she had missed that sound!

Gothel listened for as long as Anna sang, the basket of mushrooms dangling from her arm entirely forgotten, until the sun rose and the air warmed. When the singing stopped, and the birds began to chatter again, she hurried the short distance to the tower. "Anna!" she called toward the window, noticing that her girl was in her favorite spot—leaning into her arms at the window, her gaze roving the forest.

Anna heard the old witch call for her, and she tossed down her hair before Gothel even had a chance to ask for it. "Good morning, Mother Gothel," she said, smiling, when the old woman had finally climbed through the window.

"Well, aren't you in a good mood today," Gothel replied. When was the last time she had seen Anna smile so happily? Certainly not in the years she had lived in the tower.

"Am I?" Anna pulled her eyebrows together and cocked her head to one side, as though concentrating very hard, then let loose another broad smile. "Yes, I suppose I am. How strange."

Gothel chuckled quietly. "I'm not complaining, my dear."

"Neither am I. It's a nice change from being depressed." Anna gestured toward the bed. "Please, sit down. What were you doing out so early?"

Gothel sat, relieved to take her weight off her aged bones. The changing weather always made her ache. Then, comfortably seated, she showed Anna her basketful of mushrooms. "Just some last-minute foraging before the snows come."

Anna bent over to smell the mushrooms. Their odor reminded her of trees and dirt and moss, and the memories of those sensations made her heart ache in all the familiar ways. Tears threatened, but she pushed them away before they became more than just a threat.

It did not escape Gothel's notice the way Anna's eyes shone when she smelled the mushrooms. She always loved the late fall foraging, and she was always excellent at collecting the last edibles of the season… Gothel let the thought break off where it did; now was hardly the time for her to fall into one of those long hours of regret. She drew a deep breath through her nose and started to change the subject. "This winter's going to be cold, and—" And then her mind registered what her nose had smelled, and her sentence broke off halfway finished.

Anna watched, confused, as Gothel began to sniff the air like a suspicious dog. She knew the old witch's sense of smell was a great deal more acute than her own, but she couldn't possibly guess what unusual scent could be present in the tower, save the mushrooms. "Mother Gothel?" she ventured after a moment.

Gothel didn't answer; she only continued to draw air through her nose, her lips compressing and her eyebrows tightening with every breath, until every muscle on her face exuded anger.

After a minute, Anna knelt in front of the witch and shook her knee. "Please, Mother Gothel, you've got to tell me what's wrong!" she begged.

Gothel finally looked at her, her face twisted into a deep scowl, her grey eyes flaming. Anna could see the veins across her jaw beginning to show through her wrinkled skin. "Who is he?" she demanded, her voice hissing between clenched teeth.

Anna frowned, confused as much by the angry expression as the unexpected question. "What?"

The sharp anger faded slowly, replaced by a deadly-calm look that was absolutely terrifying. "Don't play innocent with me, girl; I can smell him. I'll only ask you once more: who…is…he?" She spoke the last three words slowly, enunciating each sound so there could be no mistake about what she was asking.

Anna felt all the blood rush from her face as the question began to make sense, but the fear brought out her defiant streak, and she lifted her head and straightened her shoulders as she answered, "I don't know what you're talking about." She knew it did no good to lie—not because Gothel was a witch, but because Gothel knew her too well—but knowing that it wouldn't work didn't stop her from trying.

Gothel grabbed Anna's shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes. "The man," she growled. "Who is he?"

Anna pulled away from Gothel's bony grasp and crossed her arms over her chest with the perfect amount of resentment, but she knew it would be no use anymore to lie. She didn't want the witch using a spell to wrench the truth from her. "His name is William," she replied, honestly, but with a rebellious edge still very obvious in her voice.

William. Gothel leaned away from her girl, suddenly exhausted by her anger. She had kept Anna in this tower to keep her safe from the men who would hurt her, and now there was a man who not only knew about the tower, but had been inside it. And Anna loved this man, this William—she could tell by the way her girl said his name.

She had failed.

Gothel put one hand to her cheek and looked at Anna again. "How could you do that to me?" she whispered. The anger had drained all the volume from her words, and now her voice was hoarse and old.

But that question only heightened Anna's anger, and she replied with all her old hatred of the tower and the witch making her voice come out as a shout. "How could _I_ do that to _you_?" she repeated, jumping to her feet. "Look, I know you think you've only done what was best for me, to keep me from suffering like you did once. But I've got news for you: _I'm not you!_ You can't keep _me_ locked up here because of something that happened to _you_, something you've never gotten over. I deserve a chance to live my own life, love my own way, make my own mistakes. What happened to you, Mother Gothel—it's time you accepted it, and moved on, and stopped making me pay for it."

Gothel just stared, her face blank, as Anna shouted, both reason and conscious turning on her at the same moment. She's right, they both said. She deserves to live her own life, make her own mistakes. Why was she still being punished for something that had happened so long ago?

Because Gothel loved her little girl, and she couldn't bear the thought of Anna hurting the way she had hurt. But Anna wasn't a little girl anymore. The way she had spoken had proved that. And she would be hurt by the world. There was no way to escape the world. Not even a tower could cut Anna off from the world completely.

Gothel knew it had never really been about Anna, not at the very core. She had tried to justify her decision by making it about Anna, but, when she was being honest with herself, she had to recognize that it never really was about Anna.

At the very center, it had always been about Thomas and the way she had been hurt by him. She had never even cried about it, because she had always been determined that his actions would never be allowed to break her. She had never seen just how much they really had.

Gothel buried her face in her hands, her tears flowing freely now. "I'm sorry," she stuttered between breaths. "I'm so sorry. I love you, Anna. So much."

Anna wrapped her arms around the witch's shaking shoulders and held her tightly, letting the old woman cry on her shoulder. "I love you, too, Mother Gothel," she whispered. "Now more than ever."


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note: Yes, there is yet _another_ version of this chapter. Stories are never perfect right away, and this chapter in particular has been giving me some real grief. Please note that the new end of this chapter will be important to the end of the story, so it would be best if you were to read it.**

--

William stared down at the steaming green lumps that comprised his dinner, poked at them with his fork, and decided not to eat. He never did understand why the royals always wanted to eat things that any self-respecting dog would refuse. The chef had called it boiled okra when it was first brought out, but it looked more like the muck collected from the moat than actual food.

Well, it's a good thing I'm not hungry, he thought as he laid his fork back on the table and pushed the plate away so the okra steam wasn't wafting into his face. The thought almost made him smile. He hadn't been hungry in two days. Not hungry or sleepy—or anything, really, for two full days, and he couldn't help but notice that it had been exactly that long since the last time he had seen Anna.

Thinking about her hurt, so he tried not to do it too much. Thus far, he had been failing miserably.

If his father, his brother, anyone he had ever known, had kissed her, he would have gone back the very next morning and figured out a way to get her out of that tower.

William had panicked and ran.

He shoved the plate of boiled okra further away from him; it knocked into his goblet and tipped it over, splashing the contents—a full glass of dark red wine—onto the table. A blood-red stain spread across the white linen tablecloth. William swore under his breath and righted the emptied goblet, half-hoping that the motion would make the stain disappear. And he swore again, a little more loudly, when it didn't.

He grabbed a napkin and tried to mop up the spill. That action only succeeded in staining his napkin.

Frustrated, William dropped the napkin across the damp red puddle and ran his hand across his eyes, massaging his forehead to ease the headache he could feel building. Why did everything always have to make such a mess these days?

"William!" The prince's voice, exasperated as usual, cut across the general chatter of the meal, breaking through William's pleasant but artificial darkness.

William lifted his head and glanced toward the prince. "Yes, sir?"

"It's been almost a week. Is my bride coming soon?"

William exhaled through his teeth. He had forgotten all about the deadline the prince had set for bringing Anna back to the palace. It was almost a relief to realize that not going back to the tower meant he would never have to bring Anna to this prison. He looked up at the prince, meeting the royal's petulant gaze, and replied with a great deal more anger than he intended to express. "No," he snapped. "She said no."

"No?" the prince repeated, his eyebrows going up in surprise. "She refused my offer?"

William nodded once, stiffly, and turned his attention back to the slowly-creeping edges of the wine stain on the tablecloth.

The prince was silent for a long moment—probably reeling from the idea that someone could tell him no, William thought with some bitterness—then he huffed indignantly and spoke again. "Well, that's what I get for sending a servant to do a prince's job. William! You will take me to the girl in the tower tomorrow at noon."

William looked up again, ready to protest the order, then dropped his head and didn't acknowledge the prince at all. There was no point to arguing; the prince would have his way in the end, and all William would get was an earful of complaints about how obnoxious he was being.

If the prince wanted to see Anna, he couldn't very well stop him. But maybe the prince would fall off the side of the tower and land facedown in the thorns. There was some vindictive pleasure in the image, and William smiled a little and reached for his salad.

The next morning, bundled against the cold, he led the prince through the forest, his stomach churning anxiously at the thought of seeing Anna again. She was probably upset with him for being such a coward—and rightly so, he thought; he was upset with himself for it—but he couldn't deny that he was thrilled to be going back to her, especially since he had decided that he never would. Still, though his hands trembled so hard that the horse walked with its head unnaturally high to escape the quivering pressure in the reins, William kept his expression smooth and his eyes directly forward.

It was nearly high noon when he and the prince entered the tower meadow. William squinted up the height of the tower toward the window, trying to see Anna, but she wasn't at the window.

"Where is she?" the prince hissed.

"Inside the tower," William replied.

The prince waved a hand at him. "Well, what are you waiting for? Get her attention."

William sighed but swung off his horse and walked through the dying yellow-brown grass to the base of the tower. Then, with a deep breath, he called up toward the window. "Anna?"

Anna sat on her bed, rhythmically stabbing her index finger into the mattress and trying to take pleasure in the unpleasant crunching noise that the pea-shuck stuffing made. The tower had been so quiet these past few days that it was going to drive her insane if it lasted too much longer. Even Gothel's visits had been abbreviated and silent for three days, and William hadn't come at all since the day he had kissed her. She hoped it was because the prince hadn't let him, but she worried that the kiss had frightened him and that he wouldn't come back again.

A voice at the bottom of the tower drew her attention away from dismal thoughts and unpleasant crunching noises. It called her name, and, when she recognized it, she sprang from her bed and leapt toward the window. "William!" she called back, smiling her broadest smile at him.

William strained his eyes to see up to the window, where a glint of gold told him Anna was standing. She was smiling, and he felt his pulse quicken at the sight. A smile of his own stretched across his face.

He had been such a fool. No consequences could ever be worse than losing Anna's smile.

The prince, still aboard his horse at the edge of the meadow, cleared his throat, reminding William of what he was doing back in this place, and his smile faded. "Anna," he called, hating the obedience that made him say the words, "I brought someone to meet you."

Anna's heart sank as she watched a new man, one she had never seen before, step out of the shadows of the trees. He was mounted on a large white horse and wore a blue suit and short red cape. She couldn't see anything more specific than the shocking contrast of the deep blue shirt against dark red cape, but she knew from William's descriptions that this new man had light orange hair and a frown etched on his face. "The prince," she whispered to herself, hearing the pain and disappointment in her voice.

The prince swung off his horse with a flare that whirled his flaming red cape around his torso. "My lady," he shouted up the tower, grabbing the edge of his cape and sweeping it across his chest in a deep bow that almost sent his face into the thorns. "I am Prince David, son of King Timothy XII of Aridon. I have journeyed across this great forest to bring you word of my devotion."

Anna rolled her eyes. William scowled.

There was a long pause as the prince straightened from his bow and let his cape fall back to its natural position. "How does one ascend the tower?" he whispered to William at last.

William ignored the question and spoke to Anna again. "Aren't you going to invite us up?" he asked. If the prince was going up the tower, so was he; there was no way he would let that devious royal alone with her. So when Anna let down her hair, William scrabbled up it before the prince quite understood what was happening.

Anna greeted him with a smile. "Hello. Where have you been these past couple of days?" she wondered. "I've been stuck all alone in here for three days with no one to talk to." The words were intended to be harsh and accusatory, but they came out tempered by the joy she felt in seeing him again.

William grimaced but answered her question as honestly as he could. "And I've been in the palace, ruing the day I became such a coward," he said with a sheepish smile. Then he reached for her hand and gently squeezed her fingers. She looked down but didn't pull away. "I'm sorry."

Anna shook her head dismissively. "Don't worry about it; you're here now. And—" A tug on her hair interrupted her. She winced. Someone had climbed her hair at least twice a day for years, and she rarely noticed it anymore. But the new person using her impossible ladder was inexperienced, and she could feel every inch he moved.

The prince. Assuming he made it, she would be face-to-face with the prince very shortly. She would rather have lived her life without having to face this coming moment, but, since it was happening regardless, she figured it would be best to be as prepared as she could be. She ran her free hand down her skirt, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. "You brought the prince?" she whispered with a reproachful frown.

William hung his head. "Again, I'm sorry. But he would come, and I couldn't stop him. I'm only his servant, after all."

The prince made his laborious way to the window. When he was close enough to see clearly, Anna dropped William's hand and reached over the sill to help him. He accepted her offered hand, and she dragged him the last foot up the tower and through the window, dumping him with a _thud_ on the hard stone floor.

William stifled a laugh. There went the prince's hopes of impressing her with his grace and balance. He folded his arms and backed away from the window with his eyes on the ground. It was the prince's turn to win himself the singing girl in the tower, and William understood that his intervention would not be tolerated.

The prince stood and brushed himself off, then bowed deeply to Anna. "Good afternoon," he greeted her.

Anna nodded. "Good afternoon," she replied politely as her mind churned over possible ways to get the prince out of the tower as quickly as she could. After three days of not seeing him, she wanted more than just a few minutes alone with William.

Seeing the prince up close, the only thing Anna could think of was how much he reminded her of a worm. His face was shapeless and thick, his skin the same pasty orangish color as his hair, a frown that for all the world looked unalterable pressed into his pulpy cheeks. He had tiny dark eyes, a long, thick neck, and a narrow build.

She could see him giving her a similar evaluation, his eyes sweeping across her several times in a way that made Anna uncomfortable near him, and she inched back until there were several feet between them. "You are very beautiful," he complimented her with another of his deep bows. She didn't miss that, when he straightened, he had regained the few extra inches she had put between them.

"Thank you." She took another furtive step backward.

The prince's frowned deepened, and he matched her step. "I sent my servant here weeks ago to tell you of my offer, and yet he says that you have refused it."

Anna glanced at William, who was standing against the wall near the mirror, studiously ignoring them, but she noticed that his jaw was clenched and his fingers were balled into tight fists. She had never actually _said_ no to William's official offer, but she had assumed—correctly, it seemed—that admitting her love was to be translated as no. She nodded again. "That's right."

"Why? I am the prince. I would make you a princess. Why would you say no to me?" The prince took three rapid steps forward, driving Anna back against the wall farthest from the window. There was a new whine in his voice, borne from disbelief or surprise. He wasn't used to being refused, and her refusal seemed to be enraging him.

The prince took another step toward her. He was now close enough that Anna could smell his breath, and it wasn't pleasant. Her heart was hammering, her fingers shaking, and it took her a long moment to realize that she was afraid of him, of what he could do to her.

She was too naïve, having lived her life either buried deep in the woods or locked up in a tower. She didn't know what to do when a man scared her like the prince was scaring her.

He set both hands against the wall, one on either side of her head so she was trapped between them, and he bent toward her until his face was only two inches from hers. "But there is one thing you forgot about when you said no to me, and that is that I am the prince, and I will have my own way," he whispered in her ear.

Anna's temper flared with her fear, and she shoved at the prince with both hands. "Leave me alone!" she ordered, her voice too high and shaky to sound as imperious as she had hoped.

The prince only scowled and mashed his lips against hers. His foul breath filled her mouth, and she gagged.

Then the pressure of the prince's lips was gone, and William's voice, furious and horrified, rang against the stone. "She told you to leave…her…_alone_!"

William grabbed the prince by the back of his ruffled collar and ripped him away from Anna. His fist, already curled tight and hanging at his side, exploded forward, propelled by years of anger and bitterness toward the palace and the horrible royal that he served. It connected squarely with the prince's turned-up nose.

There was a horrible crunching sound, like the noise brought about by poking at a pea-shuck mattress, then a thick silence. The prince doubled over, both hands covering his nose. Blood trickled through his fingers. William dropped his fist back to his side and stood mutely, gaping and breathing hard. This is the end, he thought. He would be charged with assault and hanged by nightfall. At least he had sentenced himself by doing something noble for the woman he loved.

The prince slowly straightened and slowly pulled his hands away from his face. He stared into them for what felt like a long, long time. There was blood dribbling from both nostrils, sliding into his opened mouth, staining his dark blue shirt. His nose looked different, too, more crooked than it had looked five minutes ago.

Finally, slowly, the prince's gaze moved first to Anna, then to William, then returned to his bloodied hands, astonishment written across every unexpressive feature of his face. After another very long moment, the prince finally reacted to the blood smeared across his front, and it was the last reaction any of them expected.

He laughed.

The prince threw his head back and laughed like William breaking his nose was the funniest thing in the whole world.

William was stunned. In all the years he had been his servant, he had never heard the prince laugh; he hadn't even known that the prince could do anything but scowl and complain. But there he was, laughing like the whole incident was a joke, like he was thrilled to see his hands and face and shirt splattered with blood.

Eventually, the prince's laughter faded, and he touched the bridge of his nose lightly with one hand, wincing when the fingers made contact. "You broke my nose," he mumbled, his voice breathless, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

William shook his head, trying to clear up his tangled thoughts. There had been no conscious decision behind the action, only a single moment of anger. "It was…it was an accident, sir," he protested, doubting even as the words came out that the prince would believe him.

"An accident? You broke my nose!" The prince stared down at his hands again. His words were clearly meant to be angry, but his intent was marred by the sounds of laughter and respect in his voice. He looked up at Anna. "That's it?" he wondered. "You won't marry me?"

Anna bit her lip to push back her smile, wondering if Prince David of Aridon was insane. "That's it," she said. "I won't marry you."

"Then I have no further business here. And…I will see a healer." He turned away and moved toward the window, Anna following to refasten her hair around the hook on the sill. But, before he crawled out of the tower, he glanced back at William. "You will not return to the palace," he ordered. Then he slid from the window and scurried down Anna's braid.

William moved to stand next to Anna and stare down after the prince. "What just happened?" he asked as the prince reached the bottom and hurried toward his horse.

Anna shook her head and smiled, her eyebrows knotted up with confusion. "I don't know," she answered. "You broke the prince's nose and were…dismissed, I suppose."

William couldn't keep from chuckling as he considered the second part of her statement. "What a tragedy. I've always loved working in the palace and serving the prince," he scoffed. Freedom from the palace had never sounded like a terrible thing. His father's cottage, though it belonged to his brother, was still standing and still empty. The dismissal left him without an income, but most days he would rather go hungry than so much as smell boiled okra again. And, if it really came to that, his brother in Quincey who would certainly let him stay…

No, there was no reason to mourn the loss of his place as the prince's own servant. William chuckled again. "Did you see his face, though, before he quite understood what had happened?" he asked. The memory made him laugh harder, and that time, Anna joined him, and they laughed together until their sides hurt.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note: Thank you all for your patience. I am sorry for the delay in posting this chapter. It was being a real pain about getting written--the entire first and second drafts of it had to be entirely scrapped because both of them were profoundly wrong and horribly dull--and, between the trouble caused by both this chapter and Chapter 11 (not to mention the other silly things like homework and Organic Chemistry exams that were calling themselves important), there was no way to get it up on time.**

**But, Chapter 12 is here now, so enjoy!**

--

The sky was overcast, heavy with dark, threatening clouds. Gothel could smell snow on the way. There would be several inches covering the ground before nightfall, she was sure, and she was glad that she had stored the last of the late-season mushrooms in her cellar two days ago. Snowstorms were unforgiving to procrastinators.

She looked around the tower room, evaluating its weatherproofing as she always had before the first snowfall. It was just a habit, though. Anna would not spend another winter in the tower, not if the old witch had anything to do with it.

The day that Anna had yelled at her, more than a week ago now, had put things into focus for Gothel. There had been nothing that she had said that day that wasn't true. Gothel had been making her girl pay for the injury done to her decades before Anna had even been born, and it wasn't fair. The old witch saw that now, understood that, and it was time for her to let Anna free, to be her own person and make her own mistakes.

It was a terrifying thought—letting Anna go out into the world would be sure to bring her pain that Gothel would not be able to help. But the risks of living were so much better than the securities of isolation. And she would always be there if Anna needed her, ready and willing to help in ways that her own sister and friends had not been in her time of need; she would make sure of that.

Gothel sat up a little straighter and felt in her pocket, where she had put the pair of shears she had been using earlier that morning to cut back her garden in preparation for the snow. Anna would not be made to spend even another night in this wretched grey tower, shut off from both earth and sky.

"Well, I suppose I should get home before that storm hits," she commented, her voice appropriately nonchalant, as she stood and stretched.

Anna leapt to her feet and moved toward the window to wrap her braid around the hook on the sill.

"Oh," Gothel groaned. Her pre-thought plan to bring up the subject was going beautifully. "Take your hair off that hook, child; I don't think my old bones could stand the climb."

Anna frowned. The witch, old as she was, had never complained about the climb before. "Then how do you propose getting out of here?" she asked as she watched her hands unwind her hair. The thought of the door flickered through her mind, but she squashed that hope before she even had a chance to feel it.

Gothel smiled. "The door, of course. The stairs might be a bit difficult, but better stairs than that wretched climb. Your hair is frightfully slippery when it's clean, you know, and those thorns are awful large when you're dangling twenty feet up with only slippery hair keeping you from falling on them."

Anna whirled around in surprise, certain that she was imagining, dreaming, hallucinating, something. There was no way that Gothel could have said— "The…door?" she repeated slowly. The words felt strange in her mouth, made her tingle all over with unexpected excitement.

Gothel reached out one hand toward her girl. "I've been more than cruel to you, child, and for that I am sorry. But that's all in the past, and I am going to be better from now on," she whispered. "Forgive me, Anna, and let me do what I can to help you now."

"The door," Anna mumbled again, slipping her hand into Gothel's without thinking about it. Every thought she had seemed stopped up by memories of childhood freedom, of forest scent in her face and forest dirt between her toes. Impossible, impossible! her mind cried. But so much wanted, and so hard wished for, and so often dreamed of…

Freedom.

The word made her dizzy with excitement, and fear. It had been so long; for all she knew, the world could have ceased to exist outside of the woods she could see from her window. And she knew full well that she was not prepared to live in the world. Twelve years in a secluded cabin, many years in an impossibly high tower—she was not fit for any other kind of life.

But those were risks she was willing to take. For a chance at a life outside of the tower, she would be willing to gamble much, much more than a few unwanted securities.

"The door, child. I suppose you still remember where it is?"

Anna looked at the far right of the room, at the hole in the floor that marked the location of the stairs down. Walking the stairwell was one of the few things she had to do for—oh, goodness, she couldn't ever remember how long she had been in this wretched tower—for her years there. "But the door is…is walled up," she mumbled, her voice catching only once.

Gothel chuckled. "I know that. The spell to move the stones is hardly more complicated than the spell that put them there in the first place."

Anna shook her head, trying to clear her fuzzy thoughts. Her impossibly long hair shivered against the floor. "And what about…? I can't—I can't go walking through the woods with this." She kicked one foot toward her braid almost violently.

"Ah, that is the first thing to do," Gothel agreed. She pulled the shears from her pocket, muttering to herself so quietly that Anna couldn't make out any words, though she thought that they sounded something like the spells she remembered from her childhood.

Gothel put her free hand on Anna's shoulder and turned her around, lifted the shears toward the thick golden braid, and hesitated. "Where should I cut?" she asked after a moment.

"Short," Anna replied immediately. The loss of all that hair was one thing she was entirely ready to face.

Gothel smiled a little, took a steadying breath to collect her wits, and set her shears to chopping away at the braid. It was thick, but the shears were sharp, and, in just a minute, the hair that Anna had hauled around every day since before her imprisonment began slumped to the floor.

Anna stumbled forward a couple of steps, unprepared for how much lighter her head would feel. She dropped her face momentarily into her hands; the ends of her hair tickled her cheeks, and the whole impossible situation became very real, very close. She was getting out of the tower. The thought made her giddy, and laughter bubbled up from her chest, into her throat, but paused before escaping her lips, waiting.

Gothel touched Anna's shoulder again, and Anna lifted her head from her hands and turned to face her. She twirled around once for the old witch, showing off her new look like she had when she was a child. "Well, what do you think?" she asked.

Gothel considered her answer. It had been a long, long time since Anna had twirled around for her like that, and the memories of her as a child, spinning in a circle and asking if she looked like a princess made the old witch's eyes fill with tears. "I think we'd better find that door before the storm comes," she replied with as much crustiness as she could force into her voice. She turned and started down the stairs before the tears could spill over and betray her.

The stairs hugged the wall of the tower for its entire height. Anna knew every step, every one of the eight-hundred and ninety-seven narrow rock stairs that wound from her room to the base of the tower. She had counted them dozens—hundreds—of times before, walked them incessantly in the years of confinement. It was strange to walk down them thinking that she might never see them again.

Both the girl and the old witch were panting by the time they reached the bottom of the stairwell. Gothel leaned against the wall by the door, gasping for breath. "Heavens, but I had forgotten how many steps there were. I do think it's easier to climb that slippery braid!" she huffed.

"It's a good thing we were going down, then," Anna commented, also somewhat breathlessly. "Going up is a great deal harder."

"Well, I won't be going back up," Gothel decided with half a laugh.

"Neither will I. That room can rot, for all I care."

Gothel shook her head and opened the door, wincing at the shrieking protest of its hinges. "Stand back," she instructed. And, with Anna safely behind her, she muttered the spell for the stones across the doorway to move from their places.


	13. Chapter 13

Anna tried to force herself to move, to step away from the doorway and out into the meadow. But her feet stayed firmly locked where they were, the toes of her shoes precisely lined up with the far edge of the stone threshold of the tower door. She tried to stretch her hand out, to wave it around in the free air and reassure herself that she would not disappear when she did. She tried to lean out, the same way she had always leaned out of the tower window.

But she couldn't move. Every muscle, every bone and fiber and joint, refused to journey beyond the opened doorway. Every motion she made toward the outdoors was repelled at the plane of the doorframe as though the opening was sealed with glass.

And so she stood, as she had been standing for a long time—maybe hours, she wasn't quite sure; Gothel had left a while ago, worried about the snow—her hands resting on either side of the doorframe, her legs a little too widely spread, like an anxious fawn that was near to bolting.

"What a sight I must be," she mumbled aloud, hoping that some humor might calm her wildly-jumbled nerves. "This is what a fly looks like when it is in a spider web. I wonder if that makes me a fly." She tried to picture a spider large enough to think her a fly crawling over to investigate the meal caught in its web, then shuddered away from the image.

This was not something she had anticipated. In all the years she had spent dreaming of the door unbricking itself, of being freed to roam the woods as she had when she was a child, she had never actually thought much of how difficult it could be to just step out of the tower. She had always thought that she would be able to leap across the doorway and run away without a backwards glance.

Why was this, this simple motion of putting one foot down onto dirt and grass, so impossible?

From around the tower there came the crunching sound of footsteps through the dying weeds. Anna glanced up at the sky, but the clouds were so dark and heavy that she couldn't tell any particular time of day from them. "William?" she called, her voice too hoarse to carry. If only she could make herself move!

She could hear him now, his voice muffled as he directed it toward the window. "Anna!"

Anna cleared her throat and tried again, forcing some volume into her words. "I'm down here."

William, waiting beneath the window and expecting Anna to appear and let down her hair, jumped a little when her voice came from the opposite side of the tower, and from ground-level. Confused and curious, he stepped away from beneath the window and circled the tower. And jumped again when, a little more than a third of the way around, he saw Anna standing in an opened doorway, braced as though against a great force, her hair chopped shorter than her chin.

What had happened, he didn't know. But there was a lot of distress in Anna's face and stance, and it worried him. He took two rapid steps toward her, then stopped and hung a few feet back from the tower, deterred by the thought of some kind of magical barrier. "Anna, what's wrong? What happened?" he asked.

Anna turned her head to stare at her left hand, resting on the stones left of the doorway. Panic was building in her chest, tears throbbing behind her eyes. Her voice came out sounding choked. "Mother Gothel unbricked the door this morning, but I…I still can't get out. I can't—" She gasped once, deeply, trying without success to control the terror that was growing in her. "I can't _move_!"

Tears spilled down her cheeks as she spoke, and, for a moment, concern for Anna overwhelmed any concern about magical barriers, and William stepped up to the tower and reached across the doorway to touch her face. He half-expected to be stopped at the door, repelled by the invisible barrier that kept Anna still inside the tower, and was more than a little surprised when his hand moved across the tower threshold without meeting any resistance. He had passed through a casted spell once before, and moving through it had been something like moving through honey—difficult, but not impossible, and certainly not too hard for someone as determined as Anna to manage.

Then perhaps the spell wasn't cast on the doorway, but on Anna herself. That thought made him angry. "Who did this?" he wondered, his voice dropping to a loud whisper, as he brushed at her tears. "Did that witch—"

Anna shook her head quickly, interrupting. "No, no. I can move." She lifted her left hand from the side of the doorway and ran her fingers across the back of William's hand. "I just…I just can't make myself…leave. The tower, I mean. My feet won't listen to me. Nothing will."

William breathed a quiet sigh of relief. There was no spell; Anna was simply afraid, after all the years she had been locked up, of leaving the tower. He smiled the most reassuring smile he could manage. "They will," he promised, "once they remember how much they loved to be outside." He took two steps back and held out one hand, inviting her along.

Anna shifted unhappily. More than anything, she wanted to break through that strange and invisible barrier, to reach for William's hand and step out of the tower. Her left hand twitched forward and nearly made it past the doorway, but it, like every motion she had made that day toward freedom, fell back just before it succeeded, dropping hopelessly to her side. "I can't," she whispered.

William inched forward again, not quite close enough to be within arms' reach. "Anna, listen to me," he whispered back. "You can do this, I know you can. You love the woods, remember? You used to try and make friends with every squirrel you came across, didn't you? It's just one step, Anna. You can do it."

William's assurance filled her with new, stronger determination. She wanted to be out of this tower, free of its stone walls and dizzying heights. She wanted to be able to see the stars and walk through the trees and dig in the dirt again. There was nothing but fear holding her in the tower, fear that was suddenly unimportant and insignificant with William there.

She would not spend her life cowed by her fear. The world was going to bring troubles and problems and pain like she had never known before, but she felt sure that, as long as William was there to offer her a hand, and Gothel was nearby to make a cup of tea and call her a princess, she would be able to face whatever the world could throw at her.

With that certainty, Anna reached one hand across the threshold, caught William's outstretched hand, and stepped out of the tower.

And, as her foot touched ground, the heavy, snow-laden clouds blanketing the sky opened up, and the first snowfall of the year floated into the tower meadow.

Anna threw back her head and closed her eyes, laughing as the huge snowflakes brushed her cheeks and eyelashes. The world was utterly silent; not even a hint of breeze disturbed the flakes' perfect downward path. Nothing had ever pleased her like the first snowfall, and being outside for this one was the very essence of all her dreams of freedom.

Finally, after so many years, there was ground beneath her feet and sky above her head again, and the first snow was falling, thick and white and silent, and the man she loved was beside her, holding her hand. It was all just a little too much to take in, so she didn't try. She just let the snowflakes fall on her face and held William's hand a little tighter. "I love you," she said, quietly, not wanting to upset the silence of the snowing world.

William, by way of a reply, slipped his arms around her waist, lifted her a few inches off the ground, and spun her around once, twice, around and around until they were both too dizzy and laughing too hard to spin anymore. Then he set her back on her feet before he could drop her and ruin the mood, and Anna wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.


	14. Epilogue

**Author's Note: The prince's appearance in this chapter depends a great deal on the way he reacted to his broken nose back in Chapter 11. Be sure that you have read the most recent version of 11 before reading this chapter; otherwise, I'm afraid you might be very confused.**

**I hope everyone has enjoyed reading this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it!**

--

Gothel hesitated at the door, her hand raised to knock, trying to summon a little steadiness for her shaking fingers. The warm breeze of early spring blew around her face; she sucked in a deep breath of it for courage. All her intelligence was screaming at her, listing off the many reasons that made this idea a bad one. But she had already made the decision to do it, so she rapped her knuckles three times against the rough wooden door.

A girl, no older than seven, answered. She had white-blonde hair that hung loose to the middle of her back, wide green eyes that sparkled with life, and a happy smile that slowly faded as she stared unabashedly at the witch. "Who are you?" she asked after a moment, demanding as only a child too young to know her manners can be.

Gothel smiled down at the girl. "Are your parents home, child?" she asked in return.

The girl backed away from the door and looked over her shoulder, drawing Gothel's gaze into the cottage.

A man stood behind the girl. He was not quite middle-aged, still fit and strong from youth. A thick, pale yellow beard covered his chin, but it did nothing to hide his suspicious frown.

Gothel straightened and forced herself to look the man in the eye. She was at the correct place, she knew that immediately. Witches never forget a face, no matter how much time goes by. Still, when she spoke, her voice came out sounding unsure. "Mark Farmer?" she wondered after a long moment.

The man nodded once, stiffly. "Can I help you?" His voice was gruff and throaty, just the way it had been all those years ago, when he had knelt in her yard and begged her forgiveness.

"You probably don't remember me," Gothel replied, still forcing herself to hold his gaze. It was harder to do than she had anticipated, knowing how she had wronged him. "We were neighbors once, many years ago."

The man gasped and fell back a half-step from the door, his grey eyes widening. But he recovered from his shock quickly and laid a protective hand on the little girl's shoulder. "Sarah," he barked at her, his voice tight and loud, "get away from the door!"

"But, Papa—" the girl objected.

"Now!" he interrupted, pulling the girl away and pushing her into the cottage. Then, his daughter safely behind him, he turned his attention back to the witch. "What do you want?" he demanded, as bluntly as the girl had. His wife emerged from a room to the left and stepped over to stroke the girl's hair.

Gothel smiled at her, at all three of them. "I just thought you would like to know. Anna is doing well. She's getting married early next month."

The woman paled and took two steps toward her husband, who reached out and wrapped both arms around her shoulders. "Anna," she breathed, her voice choked with emotion, as she buried her face into his chest. Her shoulders began to shake as though she was crying, but she didn't let any sound escape her mouth.

Gothel's heart ached with the pain of the scene, but she swallowed her feelings and let her eyes skip past the couple to their little girl, who stood watching her parents with a surprised, but not confused, expression on her young face. They had told her, then. Her head was up, her shoulders back. The joy of life was written clearly in her eyes.

Gothel wondered if she could sing, or if she preferred to dance.

"Your daughter is beautiful," she said at last. Then, allowing all the regret she had felt for so many years to seep into her voice and color her tone, she added quietly, "I'm so sorry."

Neither the man nor his wife said anything, but they both looked up at her, their eyes bright with tears, and smiled.

--

The wedding was small. Gothel stood to one side, smiling hugely. The priest from the nearest village waited at one end of the meadow, an old leather Bible clutched in both hands, his face drawn like he was always on the verge of sneezing—he had allergies and never did like the outdoors much. William was next to him, tugging uncomfortably at the hem of his new shirt.

Anna curled her toes, pressing them into the damp grass under her feet. Everything spoke to her of spring today: the birds, singing their hearts out in the trees; the sunlight, golden on the spring grass; the breeze, warm, but with the slightest edge of recent cold weather. She took the scene in slowly, savoring it. She hoped she would always remember the smell of the damp dirt, the soft touch of the breeze.

Prince David stepped up next to Anna and offered her his arm. "It's time," he said softly, smiling a little at her. His nose had healed crooked, and it now bent slightly to the right.

Anna smiled back and took his arm. It had been the shock of the winter when the prince had appeared at the door of Gothel's cabin and announced that he wished to participate in the wedding. "You would have been my bride," he had told Anna that day. "It is only right that I be part of your wedding."

William had been worried at first about the idea, certain that there was some dark motive to his offer. "You don't know him as well as I do," he had said when Anna told him about the visit. "He's up to something."

But the prince had insisted that he only wanted to be there, claiming that it was his right as the prince to participate in whatever ceremonies he so chose. And then Gothel had looked him in the eye and announced that he was telling the truth, and she relinquished her place in escorting the bride down the isle.

There was no proper isle, of course, not out here in the meadow near Gothel's cottage, but the prince had not been dissuaded at all by the wilderness. In fact, he looked a great deal more comfortable, in the simple jerkin and pants Gothel had provided him, horse-less, crown-less, and courtier-less, than Anna had ever seen him look before. Perhaps, she thought, watching him from the corner of her eye, perhaps there was even a chance that they could be friends. He seemed to have been genuinely humbled by the adventures of last fall, and he was no longer quite as insufferable as he had been—even William had acknowledged that.

The prince led her forward slowly, with the firm, measured steps that they had practiced just yesterday, until they had crossed the length of the small meadow to stand in front of William and the priest. "William, Anna, I wish you both long and happy lives," he muttered, formally offering Anna's hand to William before bowing and moving off to stand near Gothel.

William stopped fidgeting with his shirt and took Anna's hand, his breathing a little unsteady. It was still difficult to believe, even after having all winter to try and believe it. Anna—the bright, intelligent, beautiful young woman who owned his mind and his heart—was really here in front of him, and would be for the rest of his life. His head had a difficult time wrapping itself around the idea. He reached across the space between them and ran his free hand through her hair. She had chopped it short after coming out of the tower, and now it swung loose at her shoulders, blowing around her face in the breeze. He smiled.

Anna leaned into his touch, also smiling. It was all so much to take in, and she wanted to burst into song, like she always had when her feelings were running high, but the priest was speaking now, and it would be rude to interrupt the priest. Still, she hummed softly, unable to contain herself entirely. She reached up to hold William's hand against her face, closed her eyes, and whispered a song about the color of fertile dirt and dark brown that was almost black.

Halfway through the ceremony, the small gathering received three new guests: a man, his wife, and their daughter. They slipped through the trees quietly, unnoticed by the others, and hovered at the edge of the meadow, uncertain of their welcome, until Gothel saw them and gestured them forward. The little girl skipped to the old witch's side at once, her parents following more timidly behind her.

Gothel bent down to the girl and nodded toward Anna. "Do you know who that is?" she whispered in the girl's ear.

"That's my sister," the girl whispered in reply. Her voice sounded proud and excited.

"That's your sister. Her name is Anna. And the man she is marrying is named William."

The little girl looked up at Gothel with a speculative look in her grass-green eyes. "Are you an evil witch?" she wondered after a moment, a little less quietly than before.

Gothel chuckled and tapped one finger to the end of the girl's nose. "Not anymore," she promised.

"Oh." And little Sarah sounded so disappointed that Gothel had to chuckle again as she straightened to watch the rest of the ceremony. There would be time after to introduce Anna to her family.

Anna's whispered song was gaining more volume, enough that Gothel, Prince David, the man, his wife, and their daughter Sarah could all hear it. It wove carefully underneath the sound of the priest's voice, never interrupting his rhythm, and everyone who could hear it closed their eyes to listen, and, for a moment, it seemed as though everything paused to hear the song. The birds quieted, the trees stilled, even the air seemed to stop moving as they all listened to the sound of Anna's song as it built toward a free and happy ending.


End file.
